it thou, O prince, who
art feeding swine? Thou art rightly served! Did I not bid thee, 'Tell
not thy wife the truth for seven years'?"

At this the prince flung himself down at the other's feet, and cried,
"O Ivan Golik! forgive me, and have mercy!"

Then Ivan Golik raised him up by the shoulders and said, "'Tis well
for thee that thou art still in God's fair world! Yet wait a little
while, and thou shalt be Tsar again!"

The prince thereupon asked Ivan Golik how he had got his legs back
again, for the princess had told him how she had cut Ivan Golik in
two. Then Ivan Golik confessed to him that he was his younger brother,
and told him the whole story of his life. So they embraced and kissed
each other, and then the prince said, "'Tis high time I drove these
swine home, for the princess doesn't like being kept waiting for her
tea."

"Well," said Ivan Golik, "we'll drive them back together."

"The worst of it, brother, is this," said the prince. "Dost thou see
that accursed pig that leads the others? Well, he will go only up to
the gate of the sty, and there he stands fast as if rooted to the
ground, and until I kiss his bristles he will not move from the spot.
And all the time the princess and the serpents are sitting in the
gallery at tea, and they look on and laugh!"

But Ivan Golik said, "It needs must be so! Kiss it again to-day, and
to-morrow thou shalt kiss it no more!"

Then they drove the swine up to the gates, and Ivan Golik looked to
see what would happen. He saw the princess sitting in the gallery with
six serpents drinking tea, and the accursed pig stuck fast in the
gate, and stretched out its legs and wouldn't go in. The princess
looked on and said, "Look at my fool driving the swine, and now he is
going to kiss the big boar!"

So the poor fellow stooped down and kissed its bristles, and the pig
ran grunting into the courtyard. Then the princess said, "Look! he has
picked up from somewhere an under-herdsman to help him!"

The prince and Ivan Golik drove the pigs into their sty, and then Ivan
Golik said, "Brother, get me twenty poods of hemp and twenty poods of
pitch, and bring them to me in the garden." And he did so. Then Ivan
Golik made him a huge whip of the twenty poods of hemp and the twenty
poods of tar. First he twined tightly a pood of hemp, and tarred it
well with a pood of pitch; round this he plaited another pood of hemp,
and tarred that also with another pood of pitch, till he had us